For the director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, the woman has come to symbolize the yearning of Puerto Ricans from the U.S. mainland to be accepted by those on the island.

``She wasn't talking about me,'' Aponte said. ``She was talking about herself, and her search for dignity. ... That's all they're asking for.''

Their voices are growing. After decades of migration, the number of Puerto Ricans living on the mainland has surpassed the number living on the island, according to a report issued this month by the Federal Affairs Administration.

According to the report, the first-ever Atlas of Stateside Puerto Ricans, an estimated 3.9 million Puerto Ricans live on the mainland and 3.7 million on the island. An estimated 5.7 percent of Connecticut's population is Puerto Rican, the highest percentage for any state.

Leaders of the community in both places hope official recognition of the long-anticipated milestone will spur new communication between mainland and island Puerto Ricans.

``This study is a way of really uniting, because that's where the future is,'' Aponte said. ``When you have a population that is that big in both places, there's only one way, and that's to find, in dialogue, a way of belonging one to another.''

As a way of starting that dialogue, the report compiles information on the mainlanders, a population that may be little understood by those on the island.

``There is a longstanding concern that the people of Puerto Rico are not as informed as they should be about the history and challenges faced by their compatriotas who have ventured stateside,'' writes Angelo Falcon, author of the atlas and senior policy executive at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund in New York.

Puerto Ricans in the United States, he writes, are ``often seen as poor and apathetic, concentrated in the poor barrios of the older cities of the Northeast.''

That perception may be a legacy of the mass migration of the 1940s and '50s, when hundreds of thousands of poor, mostly rural laborers left the island for low-paying work on the mainland.

Falcon, a political scientist, describes a more complex community, growing in size, variety and influence as it spreads from its traditional base in the Northeast and Midwest to establish new centers in the South, Southwest and West.

Drawing on census and other data, he affirms the continuing challenges of poverty, residential segregation and linguistic isolation, areas in which Puerto Ricans on the mainland continue to lag behind other Latinos in the United States. But he also details an increasingly diverse community with a growing potential for economic and political clout.

With an average individual income second only to Cubans among Latinos, total earnings greater than those on the island, a growing middle class and an enduring identification with the island, the stateside population constitutes an important new market for Puerto Rican businesses to consider, Falcon writes.

Remittances -- money sent by Puerto Ricans on the mainland to family and friends on the island -- may exceed $1 billion annually, he estimates.

Meanwhile, the size of the population living in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor, the center of American economic and political power, offers a ``locational advantage'' that could be leveraged if the community were able to develop leadership and infrastructure comparable to those of already influential groups there.

And the comparatively low level of education attained by stateside Puerto Ricans -- only 9.9 percent of adults 25 and older had a four-year college degree in 2000, compared to 24.4 percent of those in Puerto Rico -- suggests a potential recruiting ground for island universities.

``One of the purposes of this report is to see if we could generate some consciousness in Puerto Rico about the role of Puerto Ricans in the United States,'' Falcon said. ``Ways in which the government might act that would be to mutual benefit of both sides. ... I'm hoping we can get some discussion going on the island.''

The project is one of several attempts by the Federal Affairs Administration under Gov. Sila Calderon to reach out to stateside Puerto Ricans. A voter registration drive signed up more than 300,000 voters.

Leadership workshops have trained mainland-based activists and organizations. And recruitment has brought mainland students to the University of Puerto Rico.